"Of the nearly 4,000 correctional employees, overall a small number have violated their oath of office and the public. It is my pledge and goal to weed out all the bad apples," Thomas told lawmakers.

Thomas spoke to a meeting of the Legislature's Joint Prison Oversight Committee in which lawmakers discussed reports of increased violence in Alabama prisons and allegations of sexual abuse of female inmates at Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka.

"The hard-working dedicated employees are angered by the acts of a few bad apples who take it upon themselves to abuse their power in the worst kind of way. Likewise, most employees, including myself, are frustrated at being portrayed as brutal, careless prison guards," Thomas said.

The commissioner said the department takes complaints seriously and is "not ashamed of past responses to substantiated claims of sexual misconduct."

But Thomas said out of an abundance of caution, he has requested technical assistance from the National Institute of Corrections to audit operations and make recommendations of any additional steps that can be taken to reduce inappropriate staff conduct with female inmates.

Thomas said he is also doing his own evaluation of how abuse complaints by inmates are handled.

"The Department of Corrections is committed to consistently providing appropriate security for inmates and staff, not only for inmates at Tutwiler, but any facility where an inmate is housed," Thomas said.

The Equal Justice Initiative filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice last month alleging that Tutwiler officials discourage the reporting of sexual abuse. Tutwiler's warden and officers ''punish and humiliate women who report sexual misconduct," according to the group.

Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said he appreciated the commissioner's words but said the department needed to get "past good intentions to meaningful solutions."

"There are specific protocol responses and actions that we believe can lower the incidence of sexual violence at the women's prison and we hope that the department will consider implementing them," Stevenson said.

Thomas said in 2010 there were 14 reported staff on inmate complaints, and six were substantiated.

Thomas said he thought that was an increase over past years. But he also thought the increase might be because of better procedures established to comply with the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.

"The better your PREA program is operating, the more comfortable inmates get in bringing complaints forward, you are going to get more complaints," Thomas said.

Committee chairman Sen. Cam Ward , R-Alabaster, said he wants to hear the result of the reviews.

"I don't think we have all the answers yet," Ward said

The commissioner also addressed reports of rising violence in state prisons, which routinely house twice the number they were designed to hold.

Thomas said employees for years have run the system on "duct tape and super glue."

The inmate to officer ratio in Alabama prisons is 11-1 while the national average is 5-1. The system has about 26,500 behind fences with 2,300 officers in charge of keeping order.

"Our employees work every day amongst murderers, rapists, thieves and child molesters serving sentences sometimes that will result in them spending the rest of their lives in prison," Thomas said.